I do not have time to read, absorb and respond to the rest of your post until this evening or this weekend but I just want to mention quickly that the spec I mention above is for the Look Up Table and I am unsure whether this is the same spec you are referring to as 10 bit. I did a quick Google seach and couldn't come up with anything concrete although it is interesting that I found a reference to 24-bit color in one retailer's description of my monitor which has to be BS.

No worries about responding! Look up tables are a theoretical measure at best! But the 24 bit is probably right that'a about 16.7 million colours - but is 8 bits per channel, the same as jpeg. Windows has always described colours that way (combined bits)